E.U. Report to Place Blame on Both Sides in Georgia War

An investigation is expected to conclude that Georgia set off the conflict, but to place blame on Russia for creating and exploiting the conditions that led to war.

ELLEN BARRY

MOSCOW — After a lengthy inquiry, investigators commissioned by the European Union are expected to conclude that Georgia ignited last year’s war with Russia by attacking separatists in South Ossetia, rejecting the Georgian government’s explanation that the attack was defensive, according to an official familiar with the investigators’ work.

But the report is expected to balance this conclusion with an equally weighty one: If Georgia fired the first shot, Russia created and exploited the conditions that led to war, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the report had not yet been made public.

In the years preceding the conflict, Russia encouraged separatist movements in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, territories in Georgia, training their military forces and distributing Russian passports.

The European Union inquiry is the most authoritative investigation into the causes of the August 2008 war, which battered Georgia and brought relations between Russia and the West to a post-cold-war low. Russia and Georgia have both maintained that they acted defensively. With feelings still raw in both countries, each has heavily lobbied the international community to condemn the other party.

Investigators have closely guarded the report’s contents, which will be presented to the European Union’s Council of Ministers at noon on Wednesday and then released to the public.

By blaming both countries, the report seems unlikely to resolve the debate over which bears more overall responsibility. Most countries have already taken a firm position on the enclaves, which only Russia, Nicaragua and Venezuela have recognized as sovereign nations. Europe and the United States have uniformly accused the Kremlin of changing Georgia’s borders by force, and of violating the “six-point agreement,” a French-brokered cease-fire that required Russia to withdraw its troops to prewar positions.

But the inquiry will break ground by determining who started the war. The president of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili, has said he had no choice but to order the shelling of Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian capital, variously explaining that it was necessary to stop attacks on Georgian villages, to bring the region under control or to deter a Russian invasion already in progress.

Georgia has also released telephone intercepts from Ossetian border guards that purport to show that a Russian armored regiment crossed into South Ossetia a full day before Georgia’s attack on Tskhinvali.

Russia’s claims are also likely to come under scrutiny. The Kremlin has said it invaded Georgia to protect Russian citizens, based on Moscow’s practice of distributing Russian passports to citizens of the separatist enclaves; it also claims it was compelled to stop a genocide, invoking a grave principle in international law.

Russia has also asserted the right to defend its peacekeeping troops legally stationed in South Ossetia, a claim that may prove more durable. But it is not clear how far that reasoning would extend, since Russian troops did not simply take control of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, but moved into central Georgia and conducted bombing raids there. Russia then recognized both territories as sovereign nations and offered to protect their borders, effectively cutting off a fifth of Georgia’s territory.

Led by a Swiss diplomat, Ambassador Heidi Tagliavini, the inquiry, known as the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Conflict in Georgia, was begun in December amid debate in Europe over how strongly to back Georgia in its continuing conflict with Russia. Eastern European countries said Russia’s policies in Georgia epitomized Moscow’s dangerous expansionist tendencies. Some in Western Europe were more skeptical of Mr. Saakashvili, who had made regaining control over Abkhazia and South Ossetia a goal of his presidency.

The dispute has quieted since then. An attempt to topple Mr. Saakashvili’s government by domestic opposition has failed, and NATO and the United States have embarked on a tentative warming with Russia. Georgian leaders, who still enjoy strong political support from Washington, say they have accepted that they will not regain control of the territories by force, or quickly.

Nevertheless, the report has been awaited with some anxiety. The release, originally scheduled just before the anniversary of the war, was delayed for two months when new documents became available. The European Union’s monitoring mission announced last week that it would step up its patrols near the conflict zones this week, to ward off any violence that might occur.

A veteran diplomat, Ms. Tagliavini has spent years monitoring conflicts in Georgia and Chechnya. She commissioned reports on specific topics from military and legal experts across the political spectrum. She also sent out extensive questionnaires to the governments of Russia, Georgia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Temuri Yakobashvili, Georgia’s minister for reintegration, said in an interview last week that there was ample evidence of Russia’s military preparation for the war, and that “what the Russians are trying to do is shift the debate to who fired the first bullet.”

In any case, he said, the findings are not likely to affect Western policy toward Georgia. “Our policy doesn’t really depend on the report; our policy depends on the facts on the ground,” he said. “So far we have a clear situation where Russia is not complying to the six-point agreement” signed in August 2008.

This year, Mr. Yakobashvili publicly accused two researchers associated with the commission of pro-Russian bias, saying they worked for organizations financed by Gazprom, the Russian gas monopoly. Last week, however, he sounded more confident. “They had an opportunity to express their opinion,” he said. “Now, the question is how much of the opinion will be expressed in the report.”

A spokesman for Russia’s Foreign Ministry, Igor S. Lyakin-Frolov, said it was too early to comment on the report because officials had not had a chance to read it. He said the Russian side had been “absolutely fair and honest” with Ms. Tagliavini’s commission and felt optimistic about the report’s objectivity.

He said Russian officials were hoping that the commission would allocate some blame to the countries that had helped arm Georgia, in particular Ukraine. He added that Russia would consider it unfair if the commission divided blame for the war equally.

“It was Georgia that started the aggression and hostilities,” Mr. Lyakin-Frolov said.

He, too, said he did not expect the conclusions to have a major impact on policy toward Russia, noting that the topic of Georgia came up only briefly during meetings at the United Nations General Assembly.

“We should concentrate on the issues that concern the world: the financial issues, the political issues, Iran, North Korea,” he said. “It seems to me that there are more important questions that are being discussed by the leaders of our countries.”

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